


with all the rough alikes, made you gentle for a time

by meritmut



Category: Jordskott (TV)
Genre: Gen, Resurrection, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-25
Updated: 2018-10-25
Packaged: 2019-08-07 10:35:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16406816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meritmut/pseuds/meritmut
Summary: She feels like a teenager again, all hunched shoulders and downcast eyes under her mother’s disapproval, but then—Ylva was never that, and maybe Klara has loved her all the more for it.





	with all the rough alikes, made you gentle for a time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kimaracretak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/gifts).



> for my bestest belovedest <3

**

“You’re getting too old for this.” Ylva is grumbling as she wrings out the flannel for the dozenth time, the brusqueness of her hands and familiar downward tilt to her mouth betraying her displeasure.

“I know.” Klara lowers her gaze to the dish in her lap, the water inside growing filthier with each pass of the cloth. It is almost the colour of rust now, flecked with dirt and other things she doesn’t wish to think about.

All of that was on her skin, she realises absently. Her mind is fogged, unclear: she cannot quite reconcile with the knowledge that the mess is  _hers_. Her blood, sloughing off into the water, swept away by Ylva’s steady hands. Her life; her death, and everything in between.

She feels like a teenager again, all hunched shoulders and downcast eyes under her mother’s disapproval, but then—Ylva was never that, and maybe Klara has loved her all the more for it. Now she is grown, she recognises the ways that Ylva has loved her too and Klara squeezes her eyes shut, overcome with gladness that she is still here to feel it.

She couldn’t have borne it, leaving Ylva without a goodbye. Couldn’t have gone into the earth without knowing if it would send her farewells home.

“It was like seeing you, when she came out of the wood.” Apparently satisfied that Klara is clean enough to sleep on her sheets without staining them, Ylva turns to the rook’s nest of copper hair spilling around Klara’s shoulders and begins to comb it through with her fingers, pausing now and then to extricate the twigs and leaves and little tufts of moss caught there. “Her red hair, her red hands, that wildness in her eyes. So afraid. So angry.” Klara hisses when Ylva’s careworn hands catch on a knot and the old witch tuts as if to say  _stop fussing, you big baby_. “She takes after you.”

“She takes after Jorun,” Klara leans in, presses her forehead to Ylva’s chest and breathes out slowly. Her head is ringing: it has been since she crawled out of the dark earth. Ylva’s hands continue their ungentle work, combing, soothing,  _come now, we’ll make you good as new_. “Full of piss and vinegar.”

“Just as well,” snorts Ylva, “it’ll serve her well.”

One hand falls still, resting on the crown of her head. For a moment, Klara simply lets her breathing fall into sync with the rise and fall of Ylva’s chest, anchors herself to life and the  _being alive_ of it once more.

“How is she?” she mumbles eventually.

“She killed him. The one who killed you.”

“I know.”

“Not so many, ready to kill for us, these days,” Ylva pulls away to scoop the dish up from Klara’s knees. “I’ll take her with Nicklas tomorrow. She should spend some time here. You too.”

“Alright.” Klara tugs the shawl closer around herself. It isn’t hers—she left that in the grave, crawled out with nothing but the skin on her back and the dirt under her fingernails.

“Just till the new moon,” Ylva adds, glowering over her shoulder as she empties the bowl out of the window. She leaves the dish on the sill so the rain can wash it clean, and brings the ruined washcloth over to the fire.“Then you can go home, and take her with you. I don’t have enough food for all you mouths.”

Klara smiles. “You won’t even notice we’re here.”

“Hmph.” Ylva tosses the bloodied flannel into the fire. “I thought I was done taking in strays, but there always seems to be more of you. I don’t know where Wass finds them.”

Klara slips off the stool and goes to wrap her arms around Ylva’s back, resting her head on her shoulder. “It’s good, that there’s more of us,” she says, thinking of the girl sleeping in the next room but of the others, too; the ones who haven’t found their way to Ylva’s door yet. “You’d get lonely otherwise.”

“Ha,” Ylva reaches up and takes Klara’s hands in hers, squeezing them. “I’d appreciate the quiet.”

“For a day or two.”

“Impertinent brat.” Turning in Klara’s arms, Ylva cups her face in both hands and glares fiercely at her. “You take better care, d’you hear? It’s not your time yet, my girl. It wasn’t for some human thug to decide when the forest gets to keep you.”

Her heart clenches. Leaning in, Klara presses her forehead to Ylva’s.  _The forest already keeps me,_ she thinks.  _And so do you._  “I know. And I’m here.”

“Good. Keep it that way. I’m not looking after that troublemaker on my own.”

**


End file.
